6. Cash
CASH
She already has her jacket zipped to her chin by the time I get my boots on.
The wind’s finally laying down out there—the storm gone from a roar to a hush—and somewhere past the buried pass, the dark is thinking about going gray.
A few hours, maybe less, and the plow breaks the cut open.
Then we drive off this mountain and back to the version of us that has a truck in a lot and a board to hold.
She’s sitting in the driver’s seat with her hands at ten and two on a wheel that isn’t going anywhere, staring out at the thinning dark, already gone somewhere I can’t reach. She thinks she beat me to it. She thinks she said the hard thing first so it couldn’t be said to her.
For four years, I’ve had one rule, and I broke it tonight, and the mountain didn’t take her. That’s what she can’t see yet. Every time she’s let herself want something, it’s left. She doesn’t know it can go the other way, because it never has for her.
“Craig died because he was alone,” I say.
Her hands tighten on the wheel. She doesn’t turn.
“That’s the thing I’ve never let myself finish thinking.
He went up alone, and he came down in a basket, and I decided the fix was to never put anybody on my rope again.
For four years, I’ve been so sure of it, I built a whole life out of leaving.
” I lean forward between the seats so she has to hear me.
“And then a woman walked into a storm and stayed at arm’s length in my boot prints and did not fall.
Held her half of a downed man all the way up out of that draw and did not drop him.
Sat in this cab and said my own wound back to me like she’d dealt with it longer than I have. ”
“Cash—“
“You didn’t fall, Elyse.” My voice cracks, and I let it. “That’s what I can’t get past. I spent four years certain that the second I let somebody’s weight onto my line, the mountain takes them. I let yours on tonight. And you’re still here.”
She turns then. In the gray coming up outside, I can see her face. The wall’s still up, but there’s something behind it now, listening.
“You’re a drifter,” she says. “You said it yourself.”
“I said I don’t winter in the same place twice.
I’ve never had a reason to.” I reach over and take one of her hands off the wheel, and she lets me, which is the whole answer.
“You want to know why I keep moving? Because stillness is where he catches me. Every place I stop, I’m back on that slope.
So I don’t stop.” I press her cold fingers between both of mine.
“I stopped tonight. Snowed in on a closed pass, nowhere to run, forced to sit still for the first time in four years. And he didn’t catch me. You did.”
“Don’t.” Her eyes are wet and furious. “Don’t say a thing you can’t stand behind. I got left once by the person I was going to see the whole world with. I will not do it again with a man who’s gone by December.”
“Then I won’t be gone by December.”
It lands in the cab and stops her cold.
“I’m not saying it because the mountain trapped me,” I say.
“I need you to hear that. A little while ago, you said this was the storm, and the truth is, the storm’s the only reason I stood still long enough to find out I didn’t want to leave.
That’s not the same as being stuck. Being stuck is a road that’s closed.
This is me telling you that when it opens, I’m still going to be here. ”
“People don’t—“ Her voice breaks. “People say that. And then the road opens, and they go.”
“I know. Somebody did it to you.” I bring her hand up and hold it against the side of my face, cold palm to two days of stubble.
“So here’s what I’ve got. You’ve spent your whole life sending people toward the horizon and never taking your turn.
I’ve spent mine running at it so nothing could catch me standing still.
Neither one of us has ever once done the other thing.
” Out past the pass, the gray is coming up in earnest, the first light finding the edge of the clearing.
“So do it with me. Go. Pick a card off that wall and put your own handwriting on it, and let me be the one who goes with you and comes back to the same place every time.”
“You’d come back.”
“I’d come back. That’s the part I never had before you.” The light spreads across the glass and settles over us, two people in a stopped rig at first gray light. “I finally found the place I don’t want to leave. It’s not a town, Elyse. It’s you.”
She doesn’t say anything. She unbuckles, and she crosses the space between the seats the way she did before the storm sealed us in. I hold her while the dawn climbs the last of the dark off the mountain.
“Okay,” she says. “Okay. We go. Both of us. This time, both of us.”
Outside, the light comes up full over the clearing, and the pass will open before long, and neither of us reaches for the door. There’s a whole world down that mountain, and the road’s about to open onto it. For the first time in four years, I’m not in any hurry to get moving.
I’m exactly where I want to be, and I’m going to stay a minute longer.